356 



TWO TEAKS i:?^ THE JUl^GLE. 



round to Lave a good look at the " orang-putei " (wliite man), -who 

 repaid their insj)ection in full, principal and interest. 



From the numerous posts which ran up through the house there 

 hung a great many deer antlers, lower jaws of wild boar, j^arongs, 

 back-baskets (juahs), fish-ti'aps, paddles and spears. Naked chil- 

 dren scudded hither and thither over the floor, chasing the fowls, 

 teasing the dogs and playing with the little gibbon, all of which 

 rightfully belonged to the poimlation of the village. As w^e en- 

 tered, we found a young woman with a five-foot bamboo pail on 

 her shoulder just starting to the river for water ; one man was 

 sitting on the floor making a fish-trap, and another was hewing out 

 a new door with his " biliong," or adze-axe. 



We were seated in a long hall, which extended without any 

 division the entire length of the house, and occupied a trifle more 

 than half the entire structure. It was on the open side of the 

 house and faced the open-air platform. Along the other side of 

 the house, likewise extending its entire length from one end to the 

 other, was a row of sixteen rooms, each about twelve feet square, 

 entered by a single door from the middle passage. 



OPEN-AIR PLATFORM 



Plan of Dyak Long-house. 



All the timbers of the house were lashed together with rattans, 

 not a nail nor even a wooden pin being used anywhere. Nor were 

 any of the timbers mortised together at any point. The Dyak idea 

 of fastening two objects together is to lash them with gi*een rattan ; 

 civilized man believes in nailing, pinning, mortising, or fastening 

 with screws. 



The floor was of narrow strips of the nibong palm, an inch and 

 a half wide, lashed to the sleepers about an inch apart, thus giving 

 a floor more open than lattice-work. The wall which divided the 

 rooms from the open hall was of wide boards hewn out with the 

 "biliong," placed upright, and lashed together and to a base-board 

 with rattans. Each door was one wide board with a projecting 



